Vancouver International Airport is welcoming a flurry of new direct destinations next year from across both the Pacific and the Atlantic, but the newest route with the highest strategic potential may be a flight that will travel mostly over land, starting next week.

Kokoro Dance turns 30 this year. Over the decades, the Vancouver dance company, known for its groundbreaking mix of Japanese butoh and Western contemporary dance, has premiered over 190 works and produced more than 1000 performances.

A group of Vancouver residents representing a broad interfaith community have invited Pope Francis to tour the Downtown Eastside and two First Nations reserves. The unusual request involves members of the Jewish, Muslim, First Nations, Anglican, Catholic and United Church communities, who believe Pope Francis could spur real change in the welfare of the city and province’s poor and homeless.

KINABATANGAN RIVER, Sabah, Malaysia — High up in a tree, a female orangutan and her baby picked fruit as they slowly moved along the branches. Craning our necks, we watched as the mother stretched her strong arms and legs to form a great, hairy X against the sky. The baby — old enough to have quit clinging but still several years away from being able to manage the jungle alone — lingered higher up.

Michael Bublé became a passionate dog person after meeting his wife, dog-loving Argentine model/actress Luisana Lopilato. The couple used to drive the streets of Buenos Aires — where stray dogs abound — and Lopilato would invariably make Bublé stop the car to help a distressed canine.

No trip to the end of the world is complete without seeing penguins in the wild. That is why my travelling companion and I ventured out in the cold and rain for a catamaran voyage in the Beagle Channel near the southern tip of South America.

The season to travel to Antarctica is very limited due to the seas around the continent freezing over in the winter. Antarctica is unlike anywhere else in the world in that it is governed by a treaty signed by over 50 countries including the U.S., Canada, Russia and the U.K. There are no settlements there, only the occasional research station, and the number of visitors allowed is strictly limited.

Adam Hadwin and Nick Taylor are on their way to the PGA Tour and that serves as considerable inspiration to a guy like Ryan Williams. Williams has used the Vancouver Golf Tour to keep his game sharp and along the way has played against both Hadwin and Taylor. To see them succeed helps Williams think he can do it, too.

Once every 7½ hours, needed or not, the Vancouver Whitecaps score a goal. But the wait wasn’t nearly as embarrassingly long for new midfielder Mauro Rosales. The 33-year-old Argentine was in just his fourth game with the Major League Soccer team when teammate Pedro Morales’ penalty kick Wednesday ended a 450-minute goalless drought for the Whitecaps and launched them to a 2-0 victory over the visiting San Jose Earthquakes.

A viral video of an attempted robbery in Buenos Airies Alex Hennessy, a film school grad from Vancouver, was travelling in Buenos Aires, Argentina, when an armed would-be thief confronted and tried to rob him. Hennessy had a GoPro on his forehead at the time that captured the entire encounter on a video that has now gone viral.

When you have been yellow-carded for a hand to the face of the great Lionel Messi — in front of 40,000 screaming Argentine fans in Buenos Aires, no less — just about anything else in soccer should be a breeze, right?

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